Iconographic Drawings: Vaishravana, Yama, Ushnishavijaya, Chunda (?), and Buddha (recto) (c. 1500): Art, History and Details

Iconographic Drawings: Vaishravana, Yama, Ushnishavijaya, Chunda (?), and Buddha (recto) (c. 1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Tibetan thangka painters referred to sketchbooks with drawings that delineate the iconographies—appearance and identifying attributes—of Buddhist figures. These visual guides were heavily used; very few survive. This rare example shows signs of wear, but the steady line drawings are the work of a master. The largest figure on the left is the guardian king of the north, Vaishravana, god of wealth, and the small figure to the right appears to be a donor in Tibetan dress. The next page to the right has Yama, the guardian king of the south, and the god of death in union with his consort on his buffalo mount. Below them is a goddess of longevity, Ushnishavijaya. At the far right is an 18-armed goddess seated in a skull cup on serpents, below which is a seated Buddha.

Object facts

• Title: Iconographic Drawings: Vaishravana, Yama, Ushnishavijaya, Chunda (?), and Buddha (recto)
• Date: c. 1500
• Culture: Tibet
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: ink and watercolor on cotton
• Dimensions: Overall: 20.3 x 12.7 cm (8 x 5 in.)
• Collection: Tibetan Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1985.191.a

A detail from the museum

The script notations are in an Indic script, but the line drawings are Tibetan.

Collection credit

Delia E. Holden Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1985.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 73, no. 2, 1986, pp. 26–71.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.